I don’t know. You wait yonks for a new Green Day album, and then the pesky pop-punkers tell us they’re planning on releasing three in the space of a few short months (has this joke already been made? It must have been done, surely?)
Anyway, there’s a nagging doubt that, perhaps, we’ll only be able to judge this trio of LPs when all three of them have been delivered; that they might be best viewed as one mammoth body of work, a la Robyn’s ‘Body Talk’ series from 2010. Right now, though, ‘Oh Love’ feels rather like a damp squib; the sound of a soporific beast lazily awakening from slumber and dozily chasing its tail around for five minutes or so, rather than a roaring, adrenaline-fueled returning monster.
That crunchy guitar riff, that meandering melody, that by-the-numbers solo – it all comes off rather ‘meh’, rather safe, and rather middle-ground to these ears. And, after the ambitious, concept-heavy double whammy of ‘American Idiot’ and ‘21st Century Breakdown’, hearing Billie Joe whimper “Oh love, won’t you rain on me tonight” is a bit like being granted an evening with Stephen Hawking only for him to tell you about his dating woes rather than the secrets of the universe.
As one NME.COM user, Tyrone Nagi-Smith claimed, though, a ropey lead single from Green Day doesn’t always mean the following album will be equally underwhelming – let’s start crossing our fingers, then.